Est. 2010 – "Dishonest, diversionary and pompous…"

Menu

More Guns = less crime? TRUE

I have been interested in, and worked professionally in the Criminal law field for 20 years.

Oftentimes, people in social gatherings, when they learn of my expertise, will ask me questions about crime, prevention, and guns. I always explain:

Reason and Common Sense.

Humans are risk averse. In other words, when a person assumes a task to accomplish a goal, they will take the path of least resistance to ensure the highest probability of success.

Reason and Common Sense.

Criminals are no different. If a police officer is parked in his patrol car at the end of the block, are burglars going to break into the home in the middle of the block? No. The criminal will leave and come back another time when there are no police around.

Reason and Common Sense.

Now ask yourself this question, if I wanted to ensure I would not be shot while attempting to commit a crime, would I choose a “swat team officer carrying a patrol rifle” or a “female walking her poodle” to victimize?

Many of you may not remember, or did not see, the “L.A. / Rodney King Riots” in the 1990’s. I will never forget the videos of the “Korean shop keepers” armed with semi-automatic, box magazine fed, rifles, protecting their stores from mobs, or gangs, during the riots. Does anyone remember what the videos inadvertently showed? The criminals bypassed the armed “Korean shop owners”, then looted and destroyed the neighboring, un-protected (unarmed security) stores and shops. Experiences of survivors of Hurricane Katrina re-emphasized these simple “truths”.

Those who claim more gun laws = more murders, purposely “pick and choose” the “data sets” they use in order to “provide” the “conclusion” they argue. They purposely LIE in order to gain support for their agenda.

Since the 1990’s we have scientifically performed statistical studies which prove “reason and common sense” is correct.

John R. Lott, former chief economist for the U.S. Sentencing Commission (sentencing for convicted criminals) wrote this editorial published in Investor’s Business Daily.

More Guns = More Murders? A Myth.

More Guns = Fewer Murders

In the wake of the recent shootings, the liberal media have concluded we need more gun control. President Obama just signed 23 executive actions related to guns, and promises to do more later.

To them the logic seems obvious, that more guns mean more deaths, suicides, and accidents.

And the U.S. supposedly has very high murder rates, they argue, because our nation is teeming with guns. So with stricter gun control, we would suffer fewer murders and less violence.

As Charles Blow recently claimed in the New York Times: “America has the highest gun homicide rate, the highest number of guns per capita …”

Or as the New York Times earlier this month put forward the notion: “Generally, if you live in a civilized society, more guns mean more death.” The claim is all over the news from CNN to various “Fact Check” articles.

It would be nice if things were that simple. The evidence — and there is plenty of it — points to the very opposite, that

First, let’s just be clear that lots of nations, including “civilized” ones, suffer from both higher overall murder and gun murder rates. Indeed, we are very far from the top.

In 2011, the U.S. murder rate was 4.7 per 100,000 people, the gun murder rate was 3.1.

Much of Eastern Europe; most of Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and Africa; all but one South American nation; and all of Central America and Mexico suffer even higher murder rates than we do. For example, despite very strict gun control, Russia’s and Brazil’s homicide rates over the last decade averaged about four to five times higher than ours.

Indeed, if you are going to look across all nations and not just a select few, what you find is that the nations with the strictest gun control tend to have higher murder rates.

The New York Times and others have made much from comparing some arbitrarily defined group of “civilized” nations.

But even with the very questionable data on gun ownership that the Times prefers to use from the Small Arms Survey, the results do not imply the lesson that gun control advocates think they do for the U.S.

(editor note: here is how “gun banners” lie by “picking and choosing” of “data sets”)

Many liberals conveniently focus on a few low-murder-rate countries such as England.

Even worse, they ignore that the countries they idolize enjoyed even lower murder rates before they banned guns.

The seemingly most obvious way to stop criminals from getting guns is simply to ban them.

So what happened in the countries that banned either handguns or all guns?

It did not go well: In every single place that we have data for, murder rates went up.Chicago and D.C. provided spectacular failures within the U.S.

But this has been true worldwide. The U.K., Ireland and Jamaica, despite being island nations that can’t blame a neighbor for supplying guns, have suffered more murders after gun control was passed.

So what has happened when Americans have been allowed access to guns? Consider a simple fact. Concealed handgun permits and gun sales have been soaring over the last four years, as regular people have worried that Obama would push through gun control. Yet, murders and violent crime have been falling.

That isn’t just a recent phenomenon. If you look at the U.S. over the last few decades, even after accounting for other factors, the states that have had the biggest increases in concealed handgun permits and gun ownership have seen the biggest drops in murder and violent crime rates.

Gun control just does not work. Indeed, it makes things worse.

• Lott is a former chief economist at the U.S. Sentencing Commission and the author of “More Guns, Less Crime.”

4 thoughts on “More Guns = less crime? TRUE”

A few years ago, I came across a statistic that shows that Alaska — where I live — has the lowest rate of nighttime home burglaries in the nation. I discussed this with a cop whose kid is friends with my kid. He said we also had one of the lowest rates of home invasion and armed robbery. Now, armed robbery you can kind of understand. That gets a manhunt on you and there are very few ways out of this state, so logically, armed robbery is a low percentage crime to make pay. But why the low rates for burglar and home invasion.

He noted that it’s not all burglaries. Daytime burglaries are about normal rate. Can you guess why? he asked.

I got it in one! Alaska is probably the most armed state in the union. The odds of encountering an armed homeowner during a night time burglary or a home invasion are about 1 in 1.5. This starts to look a little like a game of whack-a-mole.

We do, but they’re extremely rare here because Alaskans are so armed and we have a pretty good castle statute. Criminals aren’t stupid. They want to live and they wouldn’t here. So they go cook meth instead.